A machine gun now comes with a lesson in philosophy

Thursday 28 June 2007 13.18 EDT
First published on Thursday 28 June 2007 13.18 EDT

If your understanding of videogame culture has come solely from reading the newspapers this month you'd be forgiven for thinking that developers are, for the most part, irresponsible psychos with a target audience of demented murderers and heretics. The cases involving Resistance: Fall of Man and, more importantly, Manhunt 2 and Law and Order: Double or Nothing have prompted a torrent of anger and condemnation, with Labour MP Keith Vaz making the predictable request for tighter regulation.

This is despite the fact that Manhunt 2 is the first game to be denied a BBFC rating for a decade, and that the publishers of the last game to receive similar treatment - the idiotic pedestrian-squashing street racer, Carmageddon - appealed against the decision and won. According to ELSPA, the industry body, more than 70% of videogame releases are rated as suitable for all ages. Hardly a writhing hotbed of raw, uncompromising evil.

It should be obvious to anyone lucky enough to own a Nintendo Wii that Manhunt 2 is out of tune with where videogames are going. Rockstar's idea of cool ultraviolence belongs in another era when publishers really did think like - and aim their products exclusively at - teenage boys. Like death metal music or the movies of Lucio Fulci, it should be viewed as a piece of niche exploitation - or, as the BBFC has now ensured (rightly or wrongly) - never viewed at all.

These days, most violent games have a brain and, Lord help us, a conscience. Haze, the latest shooter from UK studio Free Radical Design, studies the disturbing connections between large corporations and the military within the context of a fictional civil war.

Bioshock, the forthcoming PC and Xbox 360 adventure, draws on stem cell research, art deco architecture and the writings of Ayn Rand to build its bizarre undersea dystopia. In the next-gen era, you're not just handed a machine gun, you get a 30-hour course in philosophy, social history and the ethics of military intervention.

Nothing symbolises the broadening of videogame culture more than the burgeoning concept of the games festival. Once the industry events calendar was dominated by E3 - a bloated, sense-shattering monster of a show, crammed with million-dollar stands and overexcited American games journos whooping at CGI trailers.

Now there are hundreds of smaller, more reflective and inclusive events like the hippyish Game Developers Conference and US-based fanboy get-together PAX, as well UK versions such as Nottingham GameCity and the Edinburgh Interactive Festival.

If you're enjoying the ever-growing diary of outdoor music events, you might want to try a videogame equivalent. It's eye-opening stuff. At the same time, tendrils are being sent out from videogames into all other media.

The aesthetics and semiotics of game design are shaping music, TV, movies and novels. Manhunt 2 - nasty, depraved, faintly ridiculous - has no real place in this diaspora of ideas and functions.

It might re-emerge in a different guise - Rockstar won't let it die without a fight - but it should not form the basis of rational debate on where games are. They are not here. They are somewhere better.